Federal authorities have charged an Army major and his wife with abusing their adopted and foster-care children through beatings, breaking their bones, failing to get them medical help, depriving them of drinking water and training their biological kids to take part in the mistreatment.

A Jackson County woman who told police that her husband chained and tortured her, then took back those allegations, carried her 2-year-old son away from the child's legal guardians on Monday, police said.

A recent report about a young Russian couple who took their 5-month-old son for a second medical opinion and ultimately ended up losing custody of the child has me very concerned about the way Child Protective Services (CPS) functions in this country.

Jamie Slate, with Abba’s Hands, has a challenge with hopes of increasing awareness about the need for more foster parents in Stephens County. He was among the many people walking a mile Saturday for the second Walk a Mile in My Shoes event.

The administration of psychotropic medication to school children continues on a massive scale. A recent cable television interview of a young man who took Ritalin against his will provided an example of the dangerous result of the involuntary administration of such a drug. The young man indicated that the drug “nearly ruined my life”. He discontinued the medication as a young teen and warns families about the side effects of such drugs.

Under Islamic Sharia’a law, western adoption practices are frowned upon. When children are abandoned by their birth parents, they may become foster children of other families, but they are not allowed to take on their foster parents’ last name, or to have any rights of a mahram (an unmarriageable kin with whom sexual intercourse is considered incestuous). Only one thing has the power to overcome these restrictions: Breastfeeding.

Jermaine Jackson is downright refusing to pay his child support bills -- so says his baby mama Alejandra Jackson, who's accusing him of falling behind on payments yet again ... this time to the tune of $30,000.

Augusta-The Maine Republican Party is speaking out against two Democrat Senators, Sen. Colleen Lachowicz and Sen. Margaret Craven, who made a mockery of a serious DHHS public hearing Wednesday by wearing clown noses as citizens testified on a bill concerning availability of beds for low-income Mainers in nursing homes.

This January, a 21-year-old Utah woman named Jenessa Simons located her birth mother via Facebook by posting a picture of herself holding her adoption information ("Born November 17, 1991...They named me Whitney"). The photo went viral, with more than 160,000 shares, and Simons received an email from her birth mother just two days later. In the three months since, Simons' success has inspired countless imitators, both birth parents and adoptees, clogging Facebook feeds with similar messages.

Some years ago, during a seminar about overseas adoption from Korea, I stated that the practice is “child abuse rather than child welfare.” Some of the social workers who were working for overseas adoption agencies looked very shocked when they heard my presentation.

The daughter of a prostitute has won a landmark £20,000 payout after suing social services for failing to take her into full-time care when she was a child in order to protect her from her abusive mother.

Note: LOL, She thinks she wouldn't have been beaten, neglected or starved in foster care!

A state report reviewing the death of a 2-year-old whose mummified body was found under a Sterling mobile home is riddled with almost 100 inaccuracies and missing details about the decisions that child protection workers made before his death, according to an investigation released Thursday.

A Skiatook couple was booked into the Osage County Jail on Friday on felony charges related to abusing a foster child. Both both posted $50,000 bonds the same day and were released. Cari Eckhart, 26, and Kenneth Glenn Randolph, 37, are accused of harming a five-year-old boy who was admitted to St. Francis Hospital in Tulsa with a brain injury on Dec. 13. Eckhart has been charged with enabling child abuse while Randolph is charged with child abuse by injury.

Two days running last week another newspaper gave huge space to the shocking story of Wanda Maddocks, a middle-aged woman sentenced in her absence to five months in prison for removing her aged father from a care home where he had been placed against his family’s wishes by Stoke-on-Trent social workers.

An appellate court in the state of New York recently handed down a decision in a fascinating case examining whether a millionaire father who has custody of his child for the majority of the year should be required to pay child support to the child's mother who has a far lower income.

Mimi DesJardins resigned as a 2nd Circuit Family Court judge Tuesday, the same day a complaint was filed in Wailuku District Court charging her with tampering with a government record, according to the state Judiciary.

The state’s top court Thursday upheld the removal of a Syracuse-area family court judge after allegations surfaced last year that he sexually abused his 5-year-old deaf and uncommunicative niece in 1972.

Data released under the Freedom of Information Act shows there were 2,895 incidents of verbal and/or physical ‘violence at work’ against county council employees from 2010 to 2012. Children’s Social Care and Adults’ Services were the departments where incidents occurred the most.

Between 2010 and 2012 Children’s Social Care accounted for 2,011 incidents of which 1,938 were physical violence. In the same period there were 381 incidents of violence in schools, including 336 physical.

Note: That's because they steal peoples kids. I suppose you expect parents to be happy about it?

Demonstrators in the Innu community of Sheshatshiu boarded up the local Child Youth and Family Services (CYFS) office this morning, protesting the number of Innu children that are sent outside the community for foster care and treatment.

Note: Of course if this was America, the police would spray you with pepper-spray and rubber bullets and you'd run.

The computer system that monitors money for Manitoba Lotteries is a new Cadillac compared to the old beater used to keep an eye on children in care, the inquiry into the death of Phoenix Sinclair heard Thursday.

Parents in Sheshatshiu and Natuashish, demanding answers from the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services, are protesting today at the department's office in Sheshatshiu. Councillor Ben Rich says parents are upset that in some cases children have been removed from their homes by the department and sent away to Saskatchewan, Ontario, and other locations in this province. Rich says parents aren't even being told about it in some cases.

Natuashish Chief Simeon Tshakapesh says the Minister of Child, Youth, and Family Services has agreed to a meeting in Labrador. It comes after a protest by Innu parents who allege the department is kidnapping their children by removing the kids from homes without letting their parents know. Tshakapesh says he has heard some very disturbing stories from parents regarding the current care situations of their children.

A new computer system for Manitoba’s Child and Family Services could help ensure no more children fall through the cracks of the system and end up dead like Phoenix Sinclair, the province’s auditor general told an inquiry Thursday.

Note: And I need a new computer so I can continue exposing these frauds.

If social workers had kept better tabs on her family, a little girl might have been permanently taken away from the mother who would help beat her to death, say newly released sections of an internal review.

A juvenile court overstepped its bounds when it ordered a woman dealing with a combative, autistic teenager to turn over her therapy and mental health records to state caseworkers, the Nebraska Supreme Court ruled Thursday in a case that could restrict government officials' access to personal mental health records.

His great-grandparents hope the 8-year-old will have another legacy. They plan to tell his story to legislators in an effort to change laws that do not currently grant grandparents rights to custody or visitation.

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Northeast Florida social workers got some praise and advice Wednesday from a prominent clinical psychologist who amassed a long list of academic accomplishments -- after being abandoned at age 4 and raised in foster care until he was 18.

For many parents, adoption day is a day of unbridled joy, the culmination of a long journey and the beginning of a new family. But sometimes, reaching the end of the adoption process can be the start of other challenges. For Elise Schreier, an adoptive mother in Newington, Conn., finalizing her adoption led to depression.

While it sounds wonderful when Christians spend more time focusing on kids who are already born instead of the embryos inside other women, the plan goes downhill when they see those adoptable children as little more than extensions of a ministry:

Note: The Lib's support it because it's a liberal feminist issue. The Conservatives support it because they believe they're doing God's work.

She once was kept in an underground cell for more than two weeks. Another time while she was confined there, she heard the cries of a deaf girl as she was physically and sexually assaulted by male workers and guards.

This just in: a UNICEF survey of 29 countries entitled “Child Well-Being In Rich Countries: A Comparative Review,” ranks the U.S #26 in child well-being, just above Lithuania, Latvia and Romania (three of the poorest countries in the survey).

Emptiness. A biological mother’s bond is special and sacred to a child, and though her foster mother cared for her, Elizabeth Johnson felt an emptiness that drove her to search for her blood relatives.

The ombudsman who investigates complaints against Colorado's child protection workers is leaving the job two years after it was created, much of that time spent pushing for more independence from the state child welfare system.

Note: I've never had much faith in ombudsman's programs. If she's anything like Maine's Ombudsman, than her favorite line is, "Sorry, there's nothing I can do for ya." And for whatever reason, it seems like this is a case of more of the same.

Many children can spend years, and sometimes their entire childhoods, with foster carers, enjoying every benefit of the stability and support they should normally expect from birth families. In fact, only a small minority of the 78,000 British children in the care system are being considered for adoption, and it is important that fostering should not be regarded as some kind of automatic conveyor belt towards adoption.

Note: Some kids can go back home too. I don't think the British Authorities realize that.

In a perfect world, no child ever would have to face the disruptions and dislocation that are an inherent part of foster care. But, because the world is so far from perfect, making foster care less damaging to children is a welcome effort.

The Maine Wabanaki-State Child Welfare Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a group formed to explore the history of state child welfare practices that separated Wabanaki children from their families, has selected its executive director.

Approximately two-thirds of children with ADHD between the ages of 4 and 17 took medication to treat ADHD in 2007. In children (as well as adults), the first-line treatment for ADHD are stimulants, and adverse events associated with these medications, such as nervousness, insomnia, and dizziness, are common and usually manageable. Cardiovascular or psychiatric problems can be more serious and may send patients to the nearest emergency department. Since prescription stimulants are often abused, ADHD patients are not the only ones seeking emergency treatment pursuant to stimulant use.

Supreme Court justices appeared deeply conflicted Tuesday as they considered the fate of Baby Veronica, whose adoptive parents were ordered to return her to the Native American father who once gave up rights to his biological daughter but now has embraced parenthood.

Note: To me, this is one of those cases where the mother, a hooch who decided to have a baby with a man she did not want a relationship with, put the kid up for adoption right out from under him. The fact that he "gave up his parental rights in a text message" should not even apply because he had not been informed of his rights as a parent. He was probably troubled and confused and thought that the mother wanted him as a sperm donor and a paycheck.

If the adoptive parents win this, it will be a sad sad day for family rights.

Oh yeah, and the Chief Justice is a System Suck who has adopted children.

Parental Alienation Syndrome is the systematic denigration by one parent with the intent of alienating the child against the target parent. In most cases, the purpose of the alienation is to gain custody of the child and exclude involvement by the target parent. In other cases the alienator wants the target parent out of the way to start a new life, or the alienating parent wants more of the marital money and assets than he/she is entitled to and uses the child as a pawn. The alienating parent hates the target parent and the children become false weapons. These are just a few reasons Parental Alienation occurs in domestic disputes.

The Florida House on Friday unanimously passed a bill protecting teens from abuse by staff in lock-ups run by the Department of Juvenile Justice – but for many advocates, the Legislature should be putting more protections in place, reports Margie Menzel of the News Service of Florida.

IN 2005, SAM ALLISON, a Tennessee housepainter in his 30s, arrived at Daniel Hoover Children's Village, an orphanage outside Monrovia, Liberia. He'd come to adopt three children, but ended up with four: five-year-old Cherish; her nine-year-old brother, Isaiah; their 13-year-old sister, CeCe, who had taken care of them for years; and Engedi, a sickly infant whom Sam and an adoption broker had retrieved from "deep in the bush." The older children's father had sent them to Daniel Hoover during Liberia's 14-year civil war, after their mother died in childbirth. The orphanage, run by a ministry called African Christians Fellowship International, often ran short of food, and schooling was sporadic. The children, who were forced to flee temporarily when rebels attacked the facility in 2003, referred to America—whose image looms large in a country colonized by freed slaves in the 19th century—as "heaven."

A county social service worker in North Carolina admitted Monday to ordering that records be faked during the probe of a child's death, and she's agreed to cooperate with authorities who are continuing to investigate her co-workers.

MORE than 100 family carers who look after children when their parents are unable to do so are launching a new campaign group to end "institutionalised discrimination" by councils and the Scottish Government.

I spent years working to reform the child protective system here in Maine, first by organizing a group called Maine Alliance for DHS Accountability and Reform to get public attention to the problems with picketing and marching and writing letters to the editor. The next stage was getting appointed by Gov. John Baldacci as a member of the reform committees.

The U.S. Supreme Court this week will hear an emotional family challenge to longstanding federal law on the adoption of Native American children, with several states, tribes and children’s welfare groups lining up to support the current rules.

Saturday, April 13, 2013

Dear Annie: My sister, "Suzie," has always been a bit of a flower child, and my parents think it's funny. Suzie dropped out of high school to pursue her "career" in something — art, music, dance, yoga, whatever. I usually gave her a place to stay when she got evicted and didn't want our parents to know, which was pretty often.

Moscow assumes that the actual number of incidents with Russian children adopted in the United States may be larger than what is now known by the Russian authorities, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in an interview with the RTVI channel.

With Los Angeles County's budget expected to be in the black for the first time since the recession, thousands of its public employees - social workers, nurses, janitors and others - are saying it is finally time for salaries to start increasing again.

Note: While I would agree with everybody else, the social workers aren't worth a piss hole in the snow. I say cut them.

A North Dakota family said coming to Jacksonville was the worst decision of their life after the Florida Department of Children and Families took custody of their three young children just days into their trip.

A Tennessee lawmaker has relented and agreed to drop his bill linking academic performance to the family’s welfare benefits after an 8-year-old girl shamed him by following him around the state Capitol.

The CHARTBOOK provides data on current foster care programs, policies and financing for every state and the District of Columbia, with a particular emphasis on therapeutic foster care. It also highlights innovative initiatives and best practices being implemented in states throughout the country.

They were horrific crimes—vulnerable children victimized and abused by the people entrusted to care for them. Put in harm’s way by a government agency and its officials whose job it was to protect them—to look after them.

Sexual misconduct charges against a guitarist from 70s rock band Bachman-Turner Overdrive were revealed in a B.C. courtroom today. Stacy Bohun, now 24, who gave permission for her name to be used, told the court she was between 11-14 at the time.

The Left has always held a dim view of parental rights, seeing them as an obstacle to centralized planning. But usually the Left’s spokesmen are a little more circumspect in their pronouncements than MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry, who blurted out in a promotional ad for the channel that “we have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents” and see them as “our children.”

Brooklyn based restaurateur Ted Mann always knew growing up that he was adopted. Recently he found out that his birth father wanted to meet him. Then he found out that his birth father is Ted Nugent. He shares the story of his incredible family reunion.

When Gov. LePage and the leaders of Maine's five Indian tribes signed the agreement creating the Truth and Reconciliation Commission last June, they set into motion a two-year process to uncover past abuses of Maine's child welfare system.

Child protection workers found Jo Angel Rodriguez and her siblings living in a roach-infested home that reeked of urine and spoiled food. The kids, often plagued with lice, slept on soiled, squalid mattresses, according to documents filed in a local court. Rodriguez’s mother lost custody of her children in 2006 when complaints surfaced she and her boyfriends shot heroin in front of them. Child protection workers later discovered Rodriguez had been sexually abused by a family member.

"What if she forgets her lines? What if her bio-family is unkind or crazy or doesn’t show up?"

I left the following comment which will probably be removed, because you know how they all feel about the truth:

Please stop referring to the real parents as “bio-family” as it is a very offensive term which makes it sound like we came out of test tubes. They are the mother and the father, you are paid foster care providers who warehouse children for CPS, not parents. Also, about your tone, which disregards the difficulties with the situation that the real parents may be dealing with, such as lying social workers who put real parents through psychological beat downs or lie to foster care providers so you will hate and fear them while convincing you that you’re angels for helping out.

But at least your right about one thing. It’s not about you.

Update: As usual, foster care providers can't handle the truth. I have been put on moderation. And I wasn't even rude. I'm just me telling it like it is. So be it. Any future comments I have regarding this blog will be posted here.

Introduction: When we talk about "Child Protection Reform Warriors", Leonard Henderson is someone who is known as one of the original and most respected. I was fortunate enough to be able to ask Leonard some questions about his views on where child protection reform is at in the United States at the moment and which direction Mr Henderson believes it is headed in. Although a man of few words and little respect for the system, Leonard has, does and continues to help many victims of CPS in the United States. Michael Borusiewicz.

The adoptive parents of a girl raped by her biological parents during what was supposed to be a supervised visit inside the Trumbull County Children Services building in 2011 have sued the agency and three employees for $3 million.

The state Appellate Court on Monday reinstated a labor arbitrator’s decision that the state Department of Children and Families acted properly in firing social worker Suzanne Listro of Mansfield, whose 7-month-old foster child died as a result of injuries possibly sustained under her care in May 2008.

Maine is not the only area where there are very real issues surrounding the family court system. In Canada – where there has been ongoing problems within their family court system – the Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that an overhaul of the system needs to take place. That the family courts have operated in a dysfunctional way for decades much as they have here in Maine. In Maine though there is a resistance to any kind of much needed reform from our courts and the divorce industry – this is one of the reasons why in Maine there is a push for reform of the broken Guardian ad litem system.

I first saw "5hadow" (spelled with a 5 instead of an S) from across Granville Street on a bright day in January. His long, strong body bopped around and his unbrushed sandy hair waved, as he rapped into a microphone connected to a speaker in a shopping cart.

Monday, April 08, 2013

A Salt Lake County woman accused of having sex with two of her teenage foster sons was sentenced Monday to three years’ probation, during which time she was ordered to stay away from children — including her own.

A Cookie Monster impersonator was arrested for shoving a child after taking a photo with the 2-year-old. On Sunday Osvaldo Quiroz-Lopez was walking around New York City's Times Square dressed as the beloved Sesame Street character Cookie Monster.

Suffolk County has 15 fewer child protective investigators than last year -- an 8 percent drop -- and social service advocates and union leaders are raising concerns about the potential for hampered child abuse probes.

New York City parents, do you know what your kids have access to in public school without your consent? I’m not talking about candy and ice cream here. I’m talking about all kinds of contraception, including the morning-after pill.

George Harasz and Douglas Wirt, a married couple living in Connecticut, were arrested in 2011 and accused of sexually assaulting two of their nine adopted boys. The two men had agreed to a plea deal in January, pleading no contest to one felony count each of risk of injury to a minor, a reduction from the much more serious sexual assault charges. But that deal was scuttled on Friday after new allegations of abuse by three more of the nine children came to light. And the couple have decided they want to go to trial to clear their names.

Often overlooked in the health care debate is the impact of child abuse and neglect on children, their families and, yes, on already-overstrained government budgets. Despite the provision of billions of dollars a year in federal funding for child welfare, several states still struggle to meet the needs of at-risk children and families, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

Saturday, April 06, 2013

Incompetent record keeping is depriving thousands of Victorians of life-changing information, but the Department of Human Services has ''a profound conflict of interest'' because fixing the problem would allow a rush of lawsuits, a parliamentary inquiry was told on Friday.

According to anonymous sources for several tabloid news outlets, Debbie Rowe, mother of Michael Jackson's kids Prince and Paris, is reconnecting with her 15-year-old daughter. The two have spent considerable amounts of time together for Paris' 15th birthday. A source said "the two just hung out. They've really gotten tight."

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